Saudi Arabia Steps Up Efforts to Oust Syria's Assad [View all]

[Comrade Grumpy]

Source: Radio Free Europe

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"Since about June-July this year, they have taken the lead in funding the Syrian opposition and also deciding to an extent who is leading the Syrian opposition, to putting more and more money for arms, and probably also arms, into the arsenal or coffers of the Syrian opposition, and also to become more diplomatically active, both in the West and in Russia," says Volker Perthes of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.

What is driving Saudi Arabia, Perthes says, is fear. "It fears, probably in descending order, that Iran may win, or Iran may establish hegemony in the Middle East and in the Levant, build a land bridge from Iran proper thorough Iraq and Syria to Lebanon," he says. "It fears that Hizballah would win in Lebanon against Sunni politicians whom Saudi Arabia has been supporting for ages, and it fears that Assad could prevail or, if the opposition wins, that it is the wrong part of the opposition that wins."

But Riyadh has other concerns, too. Among them is the danger the Syrian conflict will destabilize Jordan, where King Abdullah II faces a determined domestic opposition movement at the same time the country struggles to cope with hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.

"If the Kingdom of Jordan seemed to be in trouble, the Saudis would rush in to try to protect it as the Saudis rushed into Bahrain," says Theodore Karasik of the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. "From their point of view the collapse of a monarchy would be a huge disaster, with intense geopolitical ramifications for other monarchies."


Read more: http://www.rferl.org/content/saudi-efforts-syria-assad/25071262.html

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Ah, the Saudis, keeping the Middle East safe for Sunni monarchies.